Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection is the original Sword of the Stars games and the three expansions Born of Blood, A Murder of Crows and Argos Naval Yard. It is the year 2405, and human scientists have discovered a new technology that allows travel from star to star at speeds faster than light.

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Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection is the original Sword of the Stars games and the three expansions Born of Blood, A Murder of Crows and Argos Naval Yard.

It is the year 2405, and human scientists have discovered a new technology that allows travel from star to star at speeds faster than light. But tragedy strikes, as Earth is ravaged by an alien force. The dawning of a new era was stymied by a grim, new reality...

Sword of the Stars:

4 distinct races - Human, Hiver, Tarkas and Liir

A powerful state of the art engine delivers breathtaking graphics and robust game play

Each race has a unique mode of transport between star systems, creating very different styles of play

Over 150 distinct technologies to research on a dynamic tech tree

Over 40 weapons from six different weapon classes

Players can design and build ships from three size classes - Destroyer, Cruiser, and Dreadnought

Up to 8 players can play against the AI and one another over LAN or online

Choose from a variety of scenario campaigns to play alone or with friends

Born of Blood:

Play as the merciless Zuul Slavers with over 90 brand-new ship sections and their unique drive system – the Tunnel Drive

Over 25 additional technologies

15 more weapons you can add to your ship designs

New ship sections for the original four races, including: War, Projector, Boarding, and a new type of defense satellite – the Torpedo Defense Platform

I can't recommend this enough. This is the most fun I've had with a 4x since Alpha Centauri. They implemented a lot of elegant solutions to reduce tedium and streamline management without losing depth or complexity. The UI is not intuitive largely because they kept it from being cluttered, as such the tutorials are highly recommended.

Ship design was done very well. It is very satisfying to come up against an overwhelming opposition, make a few minor adjustments to a design and alter its tactics and come back and win not because you had bigger boots but because you used an effective strategy. There is a lot of depth to design, and variety is rewarded.

Strategy in combat is very enjoyable as you are given plenty of useful tools. You can make a 2 tier setup with heavily fortified ships engaging close range and long range support keeping distance without having to constantly switch between the various groups to give orders. That might sound oversimplified, but it doesn't play itself. It simply gives tools that streamline basic tactics and the end result is a smarter and more fluid battle. Also, combat is simulated in engine, there are no behind the curtains dice rolls to verify hit and miss. If missiles get shot down, it's because anti-missile turrets hit their target. Furthermore, it is possible to target specific points on the enemy if you want to disable something specific, like getting behind the enemy and taking out their forward shields, or their engines. Combat is as tedious or simple as you choose to make it, and the end result is a rewarding experience.

Diplomacy is available, but rather than assume you want to be friendly with the neighbors, the default is war, with alliances and NAP's being something you have to work for if that’s what your into. It's there if you enjoy the challenge of diplomacy, but its assumed you want to blow things up. With that said, any time you encounter a new player or AI for the first time your ships are set to hold fire, so the game respects the possibility of peace, but you must research their language and diplomatic options for them to be available.

People say this is underrated, and I have to agree. I'm more than a little annoyed that I didn't find this gem until now.

Live-action battles! Yeah, you command that fleet, champ! Set thrusters to overdrive, baby!

Randomized research trees! Your builds are going to be like your childhood homes: never the same one twice!

Sooooo many options for a custom game! Racist against Hivers? They don't have to exist in your world! Are you lame and want space to be flat? There's an option for that, and you lost my respect! Want to give yourself an unfair advantage? It's okay, the AI can't complain! (Your friends might)

All in all, a cool game for if you always wanted to become a galaxial tyrant, but don't have the stomach for killing real aliens (or humans, but that is so vanilla)

I think it's my favorite 4x game by far, and I'm playing it in 2015, the game still holds to modern standards and modding community is still active.This game should serve as a reference for the space 4x genre, it gets everything right and does not try to push fancy and poorly made useless innovations like too many games.

Pros:

easy to play, hard to master, has much more depth than it appears at the beginning

focusses on what really matters and does not annoy you with useless micromanagement just for the sake of complexity.

interesting real time tactical combat phases where both how you command your fleet and how you designed them matters.

very well designed UI which allows you to play quickly and efficiently.

just enough ship customization, lets you design them for your intended strategy, does not require you to spend hours fine-tuning them.

3D galaxy map which adds real strategic interest and variety to the games.

varied and balanced races with very different travelling methods.

interesting and challenging research tree, partially randomized for every game and player, with random technologies that you may not be allowed to research at all for this game, but have some chance to steal from an enemy.

smart and challenging AI which properly uses diplomacy, however not so good within tactical combat phases.

still active modding community, great mods available to enhance visuals and improve game balance (check my Steam guide ;) ).

the game seems very polished and you will have many pleasant surprises, few bad ones.

straightforward videos + text transcription tutorials, easy to skip parts or quickly read the text if you are in a hurry ...

Cons:

... but lacks explanations for advanced things, which you need to look up online, such as how planet size, resources and hazard works, how population, industrial output, and income impact each other, detailed game mechanics and weapon damage values, or some useful key bindings (pausing combat, making waypoints in strategic map, speeding up combat, rotating fleet formation, etc.).

RNG can be potentially ruin your game (if you activated random events).

no ship refitting (but that did not bother me that much)

trading system is not great, it requires you to build A LOT of freighters at some point in the game, and when you upgrade the freighter technology you need to rebuild them all. However by becoming at some point the backbone of your economy it becomes of great strategic value and improves the dynamic of the game.

TL;DR: Best space 4x game without aimless overcomplicated features, way better than recently released ones.

Great game. Gives you the sense of being an explorer every time you play it. Also has great tech and combat systems, races actualy feel different. Diplomacy is somewhat lacking but I never found it that much of a drawback.

Okay, so I'm a decade late to the party, reviewing a game released back when I was in highschool. But I'll be damned if it isn't fun!

The differences between the playable factions in the game are more than just the typical cosmetic or minor-boon types you find in many 4X games; every single faction has a wildly different playstyle because they all employ different forms of interstellar travel, and have different spreads of tech trees. There are a lot of random factors to the game that make every game different; planet hazard ratings, available techs, encounters, and star locations.

But it is where there is NO randomness that makes the game stand out: Combat is done entirely in real-time with actual ballistics and NO die rolls - the only randomness comes from weapon spread cones. Population growth is predictable, travel speeds behave the same every time, and weapon damage is fixed. This perfect balance of where to have randomness and where not to is what makes SotS so enjoyable; despite the random factors, skill and tactics will always have the final say in victory.

Toss in the amazingly detailed lore by Arinn Dembo, and you get a 4X game with a surprisingly engaging setting. The alien designs avert the usual boring "bipedal humanoid recolors" that plagues sci-fi; you've got clever reptilians, long bird-dragon-things, sentient insectoids, telekinetic cetaceans and rabid marsupials.

Pity about the sequel, though. At least the spinoffs (The Pit, Ground Pounders, and Freehold) make up for it!